In The Courts: July 12, 2026

And thanks for joining us in the courts. I'm Katie Barlow. Off the top this week, the accused January 6th pipe bomber Brian Cole Jr. will go to trial on February 16th, according to Judge Amir Ali, who set the date during a hearing this week. Ali also rejected Cole's argument that President Donald Trump's sweeping pardon of January 6th defendants also applies to him. On January 20th, 2025, Trump's first day back in office, he commuted the sentences of several people who had been convicted of crimes on and around the attack on the United States Capitol. He also granted a full and complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6th. Now, Trump also directed GOJ to drop all pending indictments against individuals for January 6th related conduct at the time. Now, Cole's team said the language of the pardon plainly applied to his case because he's accused of placing the pipe bombs outside the RNC and DNC headquarters on the eve of January 6th. But Judge Ali disagreed. In a brief three page opinion, he said the pardon language clearly applied to people who had been convicted at the time it was issued, which was before Cole was even indicted. That also means there was no pending indictment against Cole when Trump issued the pardon. Also in the district this week, the former Olympic canoeist David Carter Hearn appeared in DC Superior Court pleading not guilty to a single felony count of property destruction. Hearn, who is 67 and lives in Bethesda, is accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. And Hearn says he reached into the pool to examine the peeled sealant and then let go of a piece of it when told to do so by a park worker. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro says he caused more than $1,000 in damages. The particular provision of the DC code related to the malicious destruction of another's property comes with a potentially hefty fine or up to 10 years behind bars. And according to Lawfare's Roger Parloff, Hearn's attorneys requested a speedy trial. But the judge said because of court resources that they are unable to set a trial date before February of next year. Hearn was released on his own recognizance, and the judge refused to order Hearn to stay away from the reflecting pool, something the government had requested. He sued back in court for a status hearing on August 5th. Also in DC Superior Court, Judge D.W. Tunnage, a Biden appointee, tossed a lawsuit filed by three Metropolitan Police Department officers claiming that their privacy was violated when the DC Auditor released a report back in 2022 on their firing and reinstatement. In 2022, the DC Auditor issued a discretionary report, meaning it wasn't required, profiling 36 MPD officers who were all fired and then reinstated on the job. And three of those officers sued for defamation and libel. The court reasoned that the DC Auditor, an official government office in DC, had absolute immunity from this lawsuit. Absolute immunity shields government officials from lawsuits involving their on-the-job conduct within the scope of their official government responsibilities. And part of why we have absolute or even qualified immunity is to provide some protection to government workers who need to make quick decisions efficiently. And if they could get sued for every discretionary on-the-job decision, the system would likely grind to a halt. Immunity blocks lawsuits that might interfere with that decision making. And the rule in DC specifically grants absolute immunity to a government official who's acting within the outer bounds of his or her official responsibilities. And the conducted issue is discretionary. The discretionary piece matters because it relates back to the reason why we have immunity, protect the necessary decision making from unnecessary lawsuits. So because the judge said the suit is blocked by absolute immunity, that doesn't ultimately answer the question of whether the statements were in fact defamatory. Looking at the statement from the court in the opinion, indeed, a government agent acting within the outer perimeter of his or her line of duty is entitled to absolute immunity for allegedly defamatory statements, even if the statements are alleged to be malicious. As such, the statements set forth in the report, whether defamatory or not, are protected. Meantime, in Virginia, the Commonwealth's Attorney General is going head-to-head with a Washington County judge over two new gun laws that were supposed to take effect on July 1, one that bans the future sale of assault weapons, the other prohibiting carrying assault-style firearms in public. A Washington County judge first blocked the laws from taking effect back on June 29, but the Attorney General interpreted that ruling, saying it only applied in certain geographic areas and that the bans would still take effect throughout the rest of the Commonwealth. But the Washington County judge clarified this week, actually, his order applies statewide, meaning neither law can take effect for now while the legal challenge plays out in the courts. It is unconstitutional. It's unconstitutional under Virginia's state constitution as well, and we're glad to see that the courts are taking these challenges seriously because politicians are trampling all over the Second Amendment, treating it as a second-class right. Meantime, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones said the judge's declaration is wrong, reaches far beyond the case before him, and is unsupported by Virginia law. Circuit court injunction must stay within proper legal limits, he said, and then his office will continue defending the assault weapons ban and remains confident the law will be upheld. Jones says he plans to appeal Campbell's decision, but this issue could make it up before the Commonwealth's highest court before Tumac. Meantime, the Justice Department is threatening Maryland's top election official, Jared DeMarinis, as part of a nationwide scrutiny on state election officials. DOJ's head of civil rights, Harmeet Dhillon, sent a letter reminding DeMarinis that any election officer, including the chief election officer of the state who knowingly retains non-citizens on the state's voter registration list or facilitates non-citizens in receiving and casting ballots, could be subject to criminal liability. Now, Nicole Robinson is a political law attorney, strategist, and commentator. She covers this intersection of law and politics across digital platforms, and she's here to talk with us about it. Nicole, thanks for joining the show. Welcome. Thank you for having me. So, this is not even so much a bail threat in these letters. It seems like a pretty direct one. Yeah, it is a direct threat, but the Department of Justice does not have a strong legal hold on what they're saying in these letters. So, it has been the law of the land that non-citizen voting is against the law, and election officials across the country have been following that rule. So, there's no precedent for the Department of Justice actually prosecuting election officials for the things that they're saying in these letters. If the ultimate goal here is just to ensure that registered voters are the ones voting, and that people are not trying to get to the ballot box who don't belong there, what's wrong with this method of trying to ensure that, considering it actually falls short of any prosecution? Yeah. So, it is important that only citizens are voting in our elections, and that is what has been happening for decades, since these laws have been on the books and for 250 years that we've been here in the United States. The conservatives have not been able to find any evidence of widespread voter fraud or non-citizens voting. So, this feels more like intimidation rather than protecting election integrity. And what do you think, intimidation to what end? What goal do you think they're ultimately trying to serve here? So, they're likely hoping that election officials remove more people from the voting rolls than they normally would, because they're afraid of prosecution or some other threats. So, let's talk about what's happening in our region. We just read a little bit of the letter that was sent directly to the head chief election official in Maryland. But talk a little bit about what's happening in Maryland versus what's happening in Virginia. Yeah. So, earlier this year, the federal government sent letters across the country to election officials asking them to send unredacted voter information, lots of sensitive information. Maryland, along with other states, refused to do so. So, the Department of Justice sued and the courts dismissed the case. And now, the federal government is trying to appeal that, but it's unlikely that they'll win. This is really also a fight that has come up to the Supreme Court in different ways about state power versus federal power in overseeing elections. Now, states squarely have the responsibility for state elections and how those are run. And states have most of the responsibility of how federal elections are run. In fact, the Supreme Court just reaffirmed that in a case about mail-in voting and states having different rules about that. What role does DOJ play in ensuring through civil rights that the civil right to vote is strong? Well, you basically said it. They are supposed to ensure that elections are safe and fair. They sometimes will send election monitors across the country to ensure that people are getting to the polls in a safe way and that they can cast their ballots. There are federal laws ensuring that only American citizens are voting and other rules like that. But like you said, the states have most of their responsibility to execute election laws and to make sure that everyone is getting to exercise their right to vote. This is also a communication battle between both the federal government and the states. And sending that letter and putting out press releases and talking about it, the federal government is sending one message. And states that are the subject of some of this scrutiny also are responsible for educating their voters. We have a huge election coming up in November. So help voters across our region and everywhere kind of see through the weeds here and understand what they need to know from this back and forth. Yeah, so I want voters to feel comfortable exercising their right to vote. So nothing is changing with their elections right now. And the Maryland government has said loud and proud that they are not going to send their sensitive information about voter information to the federal government. Any voters out here that are unsure about their registration status should check that. If they're not registered to vote, they should do that immediately. And of course, get to the polls because this government is showing us that our votes really do matter. And this is also going to come up after the fact. I mean, some states take a while to count their votes because of the way the rules work. The Supreme Court and just upholding that decision, allowing mail-in votes to come in five, ten days in Maryland after election day is going to delay some of the results, which kind of leaves room for people to doubt. We only have about 30 seconds left. But what do you want to make sure people understand after the fact as well, not just leading up to and voting on election day? So we want to make sure that every single vote is counted. We have soldiers overseas who use mail-in votes and maybe their votes get here a little bit later. And that's OK. This has been the process in America for decades. So it might take a while for your vote to be counted, but everyone's vote will be counted. And that's what we want here. All right. Nicole Robinson, where can people find you? Everyone can find me at NR the Insider across all platforms and at NR the Insider dot com. All right. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll have more in the courts when we come back. Still ahead, artificial intelligence in the courts. How one local university is putting A.I. at the forefront of legal learning. That's next. Welcome back in. Roy Austin is the inaugural director of the newly established Artificial Intelligence Initiative at Howard Law. He's also a longtime public servant, former D.C. prosecutor and was a senior official in the Department of Justice. Roy, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. This is an incredible new role at Howard, something every law school is having to think about and the legal community at large. And the first thing that comes to mind, we just ended the Supreme Court term. Right. And even the nine justices can't agree on the law, what it says, even a method of interpreting it. And the problem with A.I. is that artificial intelligence is fed by human intelligence. And that seems to create an issue when we can't even agree on what the law says. And the nine smartest people who are supposed to cover the Constitution and know it better than anyone else also can't agree. Exactly. And that's hugely important, is that every different model comes up with different answers to whatever question you ask it because of the human involvement in that decision making. So we're in the same place that we are right now, which is that we have lots and lots of different answers to the same question. How do you fix that and how do you kind of anticipate that through the evolution of A.I.? It's not going anywhere. It's going to be used both by schools and in the community. And it's seeping its way through the criminal justice system, too, which is a place where, in particular, the human experience and perception in any given criminal case can widely vary. Correct. I mean, the only way we're going to fix it is for people to actually acknowledge that it's a problem. Right now, we don't have a lot of people acknowledging that we have a problem with bias and discrimination in our systems. So that's the first thing. The second thing is we need people to just understand that what they're getting from A.I. is not necessarily the truth. What they're getting from A.I. is the same thing they get from every source that they see all over in social media. I mean, it's trained in large part by Wikipedia and Reddit. And I'm not sure that we want to be making our most important decisions based on what people spout out on Reddit. I mean, can't you use A.I. to show that a defendant convicted of armed robbery in one area gets something totally different in another area just based on the judge? I mean, truly, A.I. could be helpful in teaching itself that. I mean, the criminal justice system is a whole concern in and of itself. I spent a lot of time both as a prosecutor and a defense attorney there. Every judge, every courthouse, every jurisdiction is coming up with different answers. A.I. is no different. Anytime you put something in the model, it's going to be based on how it was trained. So what is the information that it was trained on? In addition to educating the future judges of America, Howard is responsible for educating lawyers who will be practicing for the next 10, 20, 50 years. What is your top priority in the legal education component right now? Not thinking about educating the public, but in educating new lawyers who are trying to navigate dealing with A.I. as they learn this brand new, very difficult way of thinking. Yeah. So under the leadership of Dean Roger Fairfax, that's the dean of Howard Law School, the A.I. program's real intent is to make sure that our students, 500 plus students, when they enter the work world, are prepared to know how to use A.I., the concerns with A.I., so they have a leg up when they are talking to employers and when they start their first jobs. How are both professors and students feeling about A.I. right now? Is anyone feeling confident about where things are going or the direction that even a school is choosing on any given day? I think everyone is lost right now. They don't know, first of all, if it's going to take their job, if it's going to make more work. They're not sure how to even navigate. They're not sure, do I use Claude? Do I use Gemini? Do I use Open? Do I use X? Who's the best legal scholar in A.I. is the question. Oh my God. I don't think we have an answer to even that yet. I know Claude is trying to do Claude for Law. Right. We have, you know, your West Laws and Lexuses that we both used back when we were there. They're developing their own system. No one knows yet who's best. They all kind of hallucinate. They're trying to be sycophantic, which is give you an answer that you really want, whether it's right or wrong. And they want to prove that they're smarter than anything else. So they give you an answer even if they don't know the answer. We had Michael Abramowitz on earlier this year, who's a professor at GW. He's writing a book about A.I. and the law. And one of his theories I found interesting was that A.I. is actually going to make trials cheaper. And so we might actually end up having more of them in the coming years because they're easier to access. What do you think about that? I mean, I think it's possible. But when we have a system that is already based on wealth, that's a real concern for a civil rights attorney, because who is going to get the benefit of systems that are cheaper? Is that going to be your, you know, your average defendant who is coming into court? Or is it going to be the big corporations who are going to be able to use A.I. to basically fight a bunch of their battles and then decide to settle anyway? Well, given the Supreme Court just granted a cert petition by someone who wrote it themselves, maybe it'll help at least some of those defendants put together cert petitions and defenses and the like. But it's a fair point. Yeah. I mean, we're seeing a lot of pro se litigants submitting things that are based wholly on A.I. It's a bad time to be a law clerk, I would say more than anything else. It's definitely a bad time to be a law clerk. All right. Roy Austin, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for this opportunity. All right. When we come back, we've got more in the courts. Don't go away. Now to some stories ripped from the headlines. President Trump is making another run at the Supreme Court in an effort to block a judge's order that he paid five million dollars to E. Jean Carroll after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing her back in the 90s. The court has already rejected Trump's request for emergency intervention once, but he continues to deny the allegations. And he's now asking the justices to reconsider their denial. Former Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan will avoid prison time after a judge ordered her to pay a five thousand dollar fine for obstructing the arrest of someone who was in the country illegally back in April of 2025. The 66 year old was convicted of felony obstruction, but acquitted of the lesser charge, concealing an individual to prevent arrest. Prosecutors had requested 15 to 21 months in jail. Prince Harry lost his case against the publisher of the Daily Mail over the claims the outlet gathered information unlawfully. Harry and six others, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, sued Associated Newspapers Limited, claiming egregious invasions of privacy like bugging cars and accessing bank records. After a year's long back and forth in the courts, a U.K. judge denied their claims and tossed the suit. Former Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum was arrested in Alabama and is now facing drug charges. Police say they found meth and marijuana in the former Democratic rising star's car after they pulled him over for erratic driving. Gillum only narrowly lost to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis back in 2018. Court records show he was released on July 3rd. Time now for sports in the courts. The NCAA is opening an inquiry into former Cincinnati quarterback Brendan Soresby, according to ESPN. This comes shortly after Soresby dropped his lawsuit against the NCAA after they deemed him permanently ineligible to play on a college team. Soresby placed numerous impermissible bets during his time at Cincinnati, including possibly on Cincinnati's men's basketball team. And University of Maryland football player Dante Joyner was sentenced to three years of supervised probation after spending nearly a month in Harford County jail. Joyner threatened to kill his girlfriend and called her 92 times over the course of five days. He pleaded guilty to related misdemeanors and he apologized in open court during the hearing to the university, the girlfriend, her family and his family. Still ahead tonight, we'll award this week's legal loser. Don't go away. This week's legal loser is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his proposed stop woke law that was struck down by a federal appeals court this week. The law restricted educators at public schools, primary and secondary schools, all the way up to colleges and universities from discussing certain topics on race and gender. And the two to one panel with a Trump and Clinton appointee in the majority struck down the provision applying to public colleges and universities as an unconstitutional burden on free speech. The court said Florida's salary for speech rule is a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the state's own statutes recognize as the centers of inquiry classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth. Thanks for joining us. We'll have more in the courts next week. Have a good night, everyone.